In this Season

December 3
Psalm 90
As I read this psalm out loud, I imagine Mary
sitting across the room, listening. She twists and
turns. She can’t seem to get comfortable. The
baby is lying on her sciatic nerve and pain is shooting
down her left leg. She tries to get him to move by turning
on her side and pushing on the little body. Please make
this pain go away, she pleads. Please get this over with,
she begs. But her mother has told her: All in good time.
God’s time. You can’t make it happen. You wait and pray
for some relief.
Psalm 90 puts words to this human experience of
time. Like Mary, waiting for something to change her
condition, we are bound to life measured day by day by
relentless day of toil and trouble. For God, on the other
hand, a thousand years go by as if they were a dream in
a single night. In our life span, we hardly have a chance
to make an impression on God. In fact, Moses suspects,
what impression we do make is by our sins, sins that
evoke the wrath of God.
Unlike most psalms of lament, which this one surely
is, Moses’ poem does not make a final turn to thanking
God for saving us. No. Moses leaves us waiting and
praying for relief. He ends with a plea: Please make our
work prosper! Please make our lives count for something!
Like Mary, sometimes we just sit and wait. But we
know what Moses did not, that Mary’s baby—when
he comes and when he comes again—will change our
plight. God will see us differently through the glory of
Jesus Christ.
Everlasting God,
This day we wait. It may be a day full of toil and trouble.
It may be a day we prosper. I ask that your presence within
me, whatever this day brings, remind me of the hope of Jesus
Christ for me and also for all the people with whom I share
this day. May I see them reflecting glory. Amen.
Melissa Wiginton
Vice President for Education Beyond
the Walls at Austin Seminary
December 4
II Samuel 7:18-29
King David and God are in a really good place.
God has just blessed David with victory over
the Philistines. David has joined the people in
expressing gratitude and joy, “dancing before the Lord
with all his might.” Settling back in at home after the
festivities, his continued exuberance spills over and into
a desire to do something more to honor God. David
decides he will build God a house—after all, he reasons,
God has been living in an ark, while David has been living
in a home made of cedar. Nathan assures David this is an
idea God will support.
But God rejects David’s idea. When has God ever
needed a house? Instead of David building a house for
God, God will build a house for David: a house that will
endure not only for a lifetime, not only for generations,
but forever and ever.
How can it be that the God who does so much for us
has promised even more? With David we are humbled;
with David we are hopeful. We know we are unworthy,
that this is pure grace. We ask for what has already been
promised, exercising our invited audacity.
The One who promises to come is the Promised
One who has no home. No room in the inn. No tomb but
a stranger’s. No place to lay his head. He moves from
womb to manger, from table to cross, from garden to
lakeshore. He has no home but makes a home for us.
He knows our need for space and care, and so prepares
a place—a mansion. Many mansions. And he will come,
and take us to himself. And we will be home—with him
—forever.
Bounteous God,
Fill us, on this day, with the joy that comes when we recognize
your blessings. Lead us to dance, and praise, and make
excessive offerings even as you offer excessive gifts. Remind
us that our home is in you even as we await your coming.
Keep your promises, and give us the courage to claim them.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Cynthia L. Rigby
The W. C. Brown Professor of Theology